They called it a "baseline assessment."
Which, in Aureon speak, meant *let's see who breaks first*.
Three days after induction, Quinn stood inside Training Dome Three, boots planted on textured composite, helmet balanced awkwardly under one arm. The dome's curved interior loomed overhead, its surface embedded with projectors and impact-absorbing layers. High above, observation windows ringed the space like a crown of dark glass. Behind those windows, officers and instructors watched.
Behind *one* of those panes, Quinn knew, Commander Vale would be somewhere in that shadowed line. Evaluating. Measuring.
He could almost feel her gaze like a cold finger on his spine.
"Listen up!"
The bark cracked across the dome like gunfire. Sergeant Halvek—Blue Cohort's assigned drill sergeant for physical and combat—stood at the center of the floor, hands clasped behind his back. He was massive in that way only career soldiers managed, his musculature compact and dense, not an ounce of softness on him. His Ability Book, a thick slab with deep red binding and brass corners, hung at his hip. It looked like a brick someone had bled on.
"All right, hatchlings," Halvek said, voice gruff, laced with just enough contempt to keep them on edge. "Today we test combat instincts. Not polish. Not page tricks. Instinct. I don't care what pretty glyphs your Books glow with, or how many medals your sector recruiter promised your parents. Out there—"
He jerked a thumb toward the vague direction of the warfront. "—the only thing that keeps you breathing past the third engagement is whether you *move* when something wants you dead."
A ripple of uneasy laughter passed through the ring of first-years.
Halvek didn't smile.
"The assessment is simple. One-on-one combat trials. Sixty seconds each. You get knocked down hard enough that my medics have to move, your score plummets. You choke, you freeze, you turtle—your score plummets. You use lethal techniques against a fellow cadet without authorization—" His gaze swept them, suddenly very flat. "—your score becomes *zero* when I drag you out myself. Understood?"
"Sir, yes, sir!" the cohort shouted.
Quinn's own response was a beat late. The dome swallowed his voice.
Halvek gestured toward the far end of the arena. Sections of the dome's floor retracted with a mechanical whine, revealing segmented platforms rising smoothly from below, each about ten meters across. Lines flared in pale light, demarcating boundaries. Overhead, the observation glass tinted slightly, reducing glare. Screens at intervals along the walls woke up, displaying data feed windows.
"Combat zones one through six," Halvek said. "You'll rotate through as your names are called. Books allowed, basic abilities only. No upper-tier techniques, no compound pages, no experimental bindings. You're still idiots; you don't get to improvise with military-grade anomalies yet." His gaze flicked, almost lazily, toward Quinn for that last word.
Milo, standing at Quinn's left, muttered under his breath, "Feel the love."
On Quinn's right, Aric Thale rolled his shoulders, loose and confident. The phoenix sigil on his training vest glimmered faintly, as if feeling the heat of his owner's anticipation.
"Why are *we* in the same dome as the flamethrower?" Milo whispered. "They couldn't have put Techies and Glasshands together somewhere safer, like an airlock facing space?"
"Shut up, Oran," someone hissed from the line ahead.
Quinn's fingers flexed against the helmet's rim. His leg felt solid beneath him. No ache. No hint of the strange episode with his scar. Since that first day, his body had been quiet. Too quiet. It made him half-convinced he'd imagined the way his blood had hung in the air.
*It happened,* he told himself. *You saw it.*
He wasn't sure if he was reassuring or warning himself.
"All right, listen for your grouping," Halvek called. He tapped the side of his Book. Holographic text sprang up before him, scrolling rapidly. "Combat Zone One: Cadet Fen Mirra versus Cadet Jace Lorn. Zone Two: Cadet—"
Names rolled out, pairs branching off, shuffling toward their assigned platforms. Some faces lit with eager adrenaline. Others turned pale. A few looked carved from stone.
"—Zone Three," Halvek went on. "Cadet Aric Thale versus Cadet Quinn Kael Veyra."
The sound dropped out of the dome for Quinn. For a second all he heard was the rush of his own blood in his ears.
Next to him, Milo swore softly. "Of *course*," he breathed. "Of course they put you against the walking bonfire."
Aric turned his head, a slow, satisfied smile curling his lips. "Looks like the system is correcting itself," he murmured. "You ready to be reassigned to the infirmary, blank?"
Quinn made himself meet that gaze. "Sixty seconds," he said. His voice came out steady. "Try not to burn out in twenty."
Milo muttered, "He *is* gonna be fun."
Halvek's gaze cut sharply toward them. "Thale. Veyra. Zone Three. Move."
Quinn shoved the helmet on, the inner lining cool against his temples. The visor sat high, out of his direct line of sight for now. He followed Aric toward the third platform, boots scratching against the textured floor. A dull roar of simulated crowd noise began to thrum at the edges of his hearing—a programmed ambience, probably, to add pressure.
The platform's surface was marked in concentric rings, numbers at intervals. A timer hovered above the center: 0:60, waiting.
"You see Vale?" Milo's voice hissed in Quinn's helmet earpiece. The local channel crackled for a second before stabilizing. "Second window from the left, top row. The one that looks like it wants to murder someone just by blinking."
Quinn didn't look up. "How did you even patch into my channel?"
"I'm Tech Affinity. It's what we *do*." Milo's tone was breezy, but underneath Quinn caught the thread of worry. "Listen, Quinn. Aric's Book—*Ember's Vow*—it specializes in escalating intensity. He's good at control drills but he likes to show off. He'll open hot just to prove a point. Don't try to match him. Move, dodge, stall. Don't try to be a hero."
Quinn swallowed. "I'm not trying to be anything."
"Good. Keep that up. Oran out."
The channel clicked off. Alone with the heavy sound of his own breath, Quinn stepped into the marked circle opposite Aric.
Up close, the other boy seemed even more composed, his expression almost serene. Only the faint tightening at the corners of his eyes betrayed excitement. His Book was clipped to his waist harness, open to a mid-section page, glyphs glowing a slow, hungry orange.
"You could yield now," Aric offered, almost kindly. "Save us both the time."
"Sergeant said sixty seconds," Quinn replied. "Don't want to disappoint."
A muscle ticked in Aric's jaw. Whatever genial mask he'd been practicing slipped a fraction. "You barely have a pulse on the arch scanners," he said. "You don't belong in this dome. I'm just… correcting placement."
Quinn heard the echo of his earlier words in the barracks. *The system makes errors. People correct them.*
He rolled his shoulders, feeling the unfamiliar weight of the academy's light combat padding. His heart beat hard but steady. No strange resonance, no pressure in his veins. Just the standard-issue fear.
On the platform's perimeter, indicators flared green. Sensors linked. Systems came online. Above them, the timer's edges glowed a faint red.
Halvek's voice boomed across the dome. "Zone Three, stand ready."
Quinn slipped into the stance he'd been drilled on in the last seventy-two hours—feet shoulder-width, knees loose, weight forward, hands empty but poised. It felt unfamiliar but solid. He'd fought before, street-style, improvised—fists, elbows, knees. But this was different. This was *watched*.
"Remember," Halvek said, "this is assessment. Not duel. You're not here to impress each other. You're here to show us whether you can think with your skin on fire."
Aric chuckled.
Quinn didn't.
The dome lights dimmed fractionally. A tone sounded. The timer flickered.
"Begin," the system intoned.
0:60 lit up bright.
Aric moved first.
Fire didn't explode around him, not the way recruiting vids loved to show. It began with a tremor in the air, a heat shimmer coiling around his outstretched hand. The phoenix sigil on his chest flared in response, its wings unfolding in ember-bright lines. Glyphs along the open page of his Book ignited, golden-orange and razor sharp.
"Page three, basic call," Aric murmured, almost lovingly. "*Ignis Mantle*."
Flame blossomed.
It rolled across his fingers, licking up his forearm without burning the fabric of his training gear. It coated his knuckles, formed a gauntlet of writhing fire that clung to his skin like molten armor. The dome's temperature spiked; Quinn felt sweat prick under his collar.
The simulated crowd noise swelled.
*Move,* Quinn told himself. Don't freeze. Don't—
Aric launched himself forward, faster than Quinn anticipated. Fire trailed his fist as he swung for Quinn's head in a clean, brutal arc.
Quinn ducked.
Heat hissed over him, close enough to sear the hairs at the back of his neck. His body dropped lower than the drills had taught him, more instinct than form, and he rolled sideways, boots skidding on the textured floor. The impact of Aric's flame-coated fist hitting empty air left a smear of heat distortion hanging where Quinn's head had been.
0:54.
"Slippery," Aric said. He turned smoothly, fire coiling tighter around his hand. "That won't save you for long."
Quinn circled, breath loud in his own ears. The floor felt subtly different under his boots where that smear of heat had touched it—more pliant, slightly tacky. He cataloged it without meaning to. The dome adapted, absorbed.
"Come *on*!" someone shouted from the watching cadets, voice muffled by glass and distance. "Light him up, Thale!"
Aric obliged.
He feinted left, then cut in with a burst of speed, flame flaring from his palm like a piston. Quinn twisted, dodging the brunt of it, but heat scalded across his shoulder. The material there charred, blackening in a jagged streak. Pain followed a heartbeat later, sharp and electric.
He grit his teeth, shoved forward instead of backward.
Street instincts. If you can't out-distance, close in. Deny reach.
He slammed his forearm into Aric's flaming limb, bringing them in chest to chest. The heat lanced his skin, biting deep. The smell of scorched fabric and flesh hit his nose—acrid, nauseating.
Aric's eyes widened, just enough.
Quinn drove his knee toward Aric's ribs.
Aric's free hand snapped down, catching the strike on a curl of fire that hardened momentarily into a rigid band, absorbing the blow. Sparks flew. The band flexed, then flowed back into liquid heat.
"You really are stupid," Aric said—too close, his breath hot against Quinn's face. "Blank and *stupid*."
He jerked his flaming fist upward, smashing it into Quinn's abdomen at point-blank range.
The world went white.
Breath fled in a ragged grunt. Pain spiderwebbed across Quinn's midsection, searing, like someone had shoved a branding iron into his flesh. The force lifted him off his feet. The dome ceiling blurred; then the mat came up hard, slamming the air from his lungs completely.
A collective "ooh" hissed from the watching cadets.
0:41.
"Veyra, up!" Halvek's bark cut through the roaring in his ears. "Move or you *fail*!"
Quinn rolled, more reflex than thought, as another gout of flame scorched the spot where his head had just been. He scrambled to his feet, stomach screaming, vision edged in black.
His burned shoulder throbbed in harsh spikes. He risked a glance—it wasn't as bad as it felt, but the skin beneath the charred fabric was an angry red, blistering in places. His abdomen, where Aric's blow had landed, already blossomed with bruised heat.
*You've taken worse,* he told himself savagely. *You've taken beatings in alleys for a ration chip. You're still here.*
Fire hissed nearby, snapping his attention back.
Aric advanced at an unhurried walk now, flame coiling lazily around both hands. His phoenix sigil blazed brighter, the wings expanding, feathers etched in dancing gold. His Book page—still open—gleamed with active glyphs, lines of script pulsing slowly as they fed the summoned fire.
"See?" Aric called, loud enough for the whole dome to hear. "This is why blanks don't belong here. No instinct. No defense. Just meat."
Laughter rippled from some sections of the watching cohort. Others were silent, eyes sharp.
Quinn's teeth ground.
0:32.
Movement. You have to keep moving.
He feinted right, then dove left, trying to circle behind Aric. The other boy pivoted smoothly, tracking Quinn like he'd rehearsed this in his sleep. Flame lashed out in a whip-like arc, a blazing ribbon that snapped across Quinn's chest.
Pain. More char. A strangled sound tore itself from Quinn's throat.
He stumbled, dropped to one knee.
His left leg—the one with the old scar—hit the mat hard. Shock flared up the joint. For an instant, the world narrowed to that point of contact, to bone against synthetic padding, to pressure along the pale line that had bled days ago when it had no right to.
Something buckled inside.
Heat—different from Aric's fire—pulsed through Quinn's body. It started at the scar, a dull red warmth, then shot upward in a jagged rush. It threaded through muscles, climbed his spine, crackled behind his eyes. His vision lurched. The dome's colors warped, oversaturated—Aric's flames too bright, the mat's gray too deep, the air itself shimmering in faint red currents.
His heartbeat slammed against his ribs, not fast, but *heavy*.
0:26.
Aric saw the opening. "Stay down," he advised, voice gleeful now. Flame gathered at both palms, denser, hotter, spherical. The phoenix on his chest unfurled fully, wings spreading across his torso, head rising toward his throat.
"Page five," he called, as if auditioning. "*Scorchburst.*"
Halvek's voice snapped, "Thale—baseline only—"
"The Book wants to *play*," Aric shot back, eyes burning with reflected flame. "I'm in control."
The ball of fire between his hands seethed, snapping and roiling like a chunk of captive sun.
Quinn's skin crawled, warning screaming along nerves.
A memory flashed—steel corridors in the testing center, the cold press of a scanner on his palm, the boredom in the technician's eyes as the readings flatlined. The word *blank* stamped across his file.
Under that, in Vale's sharp handwriting: *Retest recommended: neuro-cardiac anomaly.*
His knee throbbed in time with his pulse.
The warmth inside him coiled tighter, hotter, different from external flame. It felt… internal. Pressurized. Like something under his skin had been wrapped in barbed wire, and now the wire was being twisted.
"Last chance to yield," Aric said, raising the churning sphere. "I'm not going to kill you. They'd be mad. But it's going to hurt."
Quinn pushed one boot against the mat, tried to stand. His leg buckled. The world tilted.
For a heartbeat, despair flared sharp and clean. This was it. He'd get burned down in front of everyone. They'd mark it on his record: *Inadequate combat response. Poor viability.* They'd ship him to some backline logistics track or straight out of the academy.
Something in him recoiled at that. Not fear of failure.
Refusal.
A different voice—small, old, buried—whispered from the back of his mind, rising through the roar of blood.
*No.*
His heart slammed once, so hard it felt like it cracked ribs on the way out.
Quinn's hands hit the mat. His fingers curled. He felt it then—really felt it—running beneath his skin, in the channels of his veins, coiling in his chest and limbs: a heat that wasn't quite heat, a density, a thickness. His blood felt… *heavy*.
Not sluggish. Powerful. Pressurized, like water behind a dam too small.
He heard the muffled sound of Halvek shouting something. Heard the way the crowd noise shifted, some deeper instinct pricking at the mass of onlookers.
Aric's fireball seethed above his head, drawn back for the throw. Sweat ran down his temples from the exertion of holding so much active flame. "Stay still," he said. "You're just going to embarrass yourself more."
Quinn lifted his head.
The world sharpened.
He could see, with perfect clarity, individual tongues of flame lapping the surface of Aric's construct, curling and uncurling like petals around a core. He saw the thin threads of light cycling from Aric's chest down his arms, fueling the page technique. He saw tiny motes of glowing dust in the air—ambient residuals from dozens of lesser abilities going off around the dome.
Everything edged in faint red.
His heart thudded again.
The warmth in his leg flared white-hot. The faint scar there—hidden beneath academy fabric—seemed to split *inside* him, not on the skin, but deeper, in some invisible layer.
Pain lanced up—but behind it, something else cut free.
Pressure broke.
His blood surged.
Not in arteries, not in any pattern he recognized. It rushed toward his hands, toward his chest, toward the surfaces facing Aric, as if drawn to the threat.
0:19.
"Say goodnight!" Aric shouted.
He hurled the fire.
It leapt from his hands in a roaring, incandescent wave, not a neat sphere after all but a rushing *blast*, fanning out to engulf Quinn's entire kneeling form. The heat hit like a physical wall, the air whooshing outward, flattening the edges of Quinn's jacket.
Quinn's body reacted before his conscious mind did.
His hands, flat on the mat, snapped up in front of his face, palms out. Not a technique he'd been taught. Just an animal flinch—protect the head, shield the torso.
His blood answered.
He felt it drag through him, a liquid rip, like all the fluid in his arms was being yanked forward. His veins burned icy-hot, an impossible cold threaded through fire. It was agony and euphoria at once, like scratching an itch in the marrow of his bones.
Something *left* him.
For a split second, his skin tingled from the inside out, as if there were suddenly more space under it. The weight in his hands increased, then exploded outward.
A shape *snapped* into being between him and the oncoming inferno.
It was red. Not the flickering, gold-tinged red of Aric's flames, but a deeper, darker crimson, so saturated it looked almost black at the edges. It formed in sheets, layered plates overlapping like scales, translucent but dense. It curved out from Quinn's forearms in a convex arc, taller than he was kneeling, edges fuzzy with tiny tendrils that writhed and snapped before stilling.
For an instant, there was just him, on his knees, and this... *thing* blooming from his blood, humming with a low, subsonic vibration he felt in his teeth.
Then Aric's Scorchburst hit it.
The world disappeared in white-orange light.
Heat hammered the crimson barrier. Flame bellowed around it, clawing at the edges, seeking a way through. The sound was a living roar, like a freight engine chewing its own tracks. Quinn's helmet tags flared temperature warnings, icons blinking angry red.
Inside that hell-glow, his shield shuddered.
He could *feel* it. The impact resonated back through his bones, each surge of flame slamming into the crimson plates and sending ripples through whatever tether connected them to his flesh. It was like holding a damaged bulkhead against vacuum with bare hands.
He dug in, muscles screaming, every instinct yelling at him to drop his arms and dive. But if he dropped them, the connection would go. And if the connection went—
He didn't think the shield would stay without him.
Behind the roaring fire, he sensed Aric's shock. A wobble in the controlled flow. A hitch.
The crimson construct—his shield—flared brighter in the center, where the fire hit hardest. For an instant, veins of darker color traced through it, branching, then sealing.
Heat licked around the edges, singeing Quinn's sides where the shield didn't cover. His forearms felt like they were pressed against a forge. The smell of cooked fabric, scorched hair, and something sharper—something metallic and almost sweet—filled the air.
His *own* scent.
0:09.
The Scorchburst faltered.
Quinn's arms trembled. His shoulders ached, muscles threatening to tear. His heart thundered so violently now that his vision pulsed with each beat. The shield between him and the fire began to… drip.
Tiny beads of crimson formed along its lower rim, where the construct touched the mat. They elongated, stretched, then fell, splattering thickly. Each drop landed with a wet smack and lay there for a second before thinning and spreading, seeping into the floor and darkening the synthetic material.
He realized, distantly, that the shield itself was *blood*.
Not in the way a nosebleed was blood, not thin and bright. This was thicker, denser, like partially coagulated fluid suspended in some invisible lattice. It held a shape it had no right to hold.
The Scorchburst guttered and died.
Aric's flames receded, dissolving into steam and the faint stink of burned ozone. Heat shimmered in the air, slowly bleeding away. For a moment, there was a ringing silence, sound sucked out of the dome.
Then Quinn heard it—the staccato drip of his own blood, still falling in lazy drops from the bottom edge of the crimson shield.
0:03.
The construct trembled once. Cracks spidered across its surface in faint, darker lines. The humming in Quinn's bones rose in pitch, then cut abruptly.
The shield collapsed.
It didn't shatter like glass. It sloughed. The plates lost cohesion, liquefying all at once, pouring forward in a rush of deep red. It splashed onto the mat in a startling wave, splattering Quinn's knees, his boots, the lower half of his vest.
He flinched back with a strangled curse, instinctively repulsed—and yet, under that, some traitorous part of him… *thrummed*.
The blood didn't spread like normal fluid. It hit the mat and held, quivering, a shallow pool that refused to soak in. Its surface shimmered faintly, like disturbed oil.
0:00.
"Time," the system voice declared, eerily calm. "Combat Zone Three: timer complete. Trial ended."
The recorded crowd noise cut out.
Silence flooded in behind it.
In that silence, Quinn became acutely aware of three things.
His arms, from wrist to shoulder, were slick with blood. His blood. It glistened darkly under the dome lights, trailing in rivulets from his fingers, beading at his elbows, running down his forearms in viscous lines. His veins beneath his skin stood out in faint shadowed relief, like something under the surface had swollen.
His breathing was ragged. Each inhale tasted of iron. The back of his throat tingled with the metallic tang so sharply he almost gagged.
And every eye in the dome was on him.
"Holy…" Milo's voice crackled faintly through Quinn's helmet, unfiltered shock burning through the comm line. "Quinn. Quinn, what the hell was *that*?"
Aric stood several meters away, hands lowered, his own flames extinguished. The phoenix sigil on his chest still glowed, but dimmer now, unsettled. His face had gone pale beneath the light sheen of sweat. His eyes were wide, pupils blown.
He stared at the puddle of blood between them, then at Quinn's dripping arms, then back. "You—" His voice broke, came back thin. "What did you just… How—"
"Thale!" Halvek's bark snapped him out of it. The sergeant strode toward the platform, boots hitting the dome floor with heavy, measured steps. "What level page was that? You were instructed—"
"Baseline, sir," Aric said automatically, then caught himself. "I—page five activation, sir. *Scorchburst.* Controlled. I kept it under lethal threshold, check the—"
"Under lethal threshold, my ass," Halvek growled. He flicked a wrist; a holo window flared to life near his head, showing a replay of the last ten seconds: Aric's fire blooming, Quinn raising his hands, the sudden eruption of crimson shield.
The sergeant's words died.
Quinn saw it there, from an outside angle—the way his arms jerked up, the visible bulge along his forearms as his veins swelled, the blooming of dark red between him and the incoming blast, shaped almost like a… like a wing, arcing around him.
The shield took the hit. The flames splashed and rolled over it, searching for purchase, then faded.
The replay slowed on the collapse. Droplets of blood hanging in the air just a fraction too long before gravity claimed them.
The holo cut.
Halvek's gaze swung to Quinn. Up close, the sergeant's eyes were a surprisingly light hazel, almost yellow near the pupil. Now, they narrowed, all pretense of casual derision gone.
"Cadet Veyra," he said slowly. "Explain what you just did."
Quinn's mouth was dry. His heartbeat hadn't settled; it thudded against his ribs, each pulse sending a faint answering flutter through the remaining blood on his skin.
"I… raised my hands, sir," he managed. "To block."
Halvek's jaw clenched. "Don't be smart, Veyra. That wasn't a standard shield technique. You have no Book. You have no listed Affinity."
"I know, sir."
"Then what," Halvek enunciated, each word clipped, "was *that*?"
Quinn stared at his own arms. The blood there was already thickening, darkening at the edges. And under the stickiness, under the sensory disgust, he felt… good.
Not in any way he could easily name. His burns hurt, his muscles ached, his lungs burned from the heat. But beneath that, deeper, there was a humming satisfaction. Like some inner engine had finally been turned on.
"I don't know," he said, and it was mostly true. "It just… happened."
Halvek's gaze flicked, almost instinctively, to the observation windows. Quinn followed it.
Behind the tinted glass, outlined by the faint glow of holo-interfaces, a handful of officers clustered. One stood slightly apart.
Commander Vale.
Even at this distance, Quinn recognized her posture—the precise, rigid set of her shoulders, the way her hands rested light on the rail, neither clenched nor relaxed. She was looking down at him, her face unreadable behind the glass.
Quinn's chest tightened.
Halvek tapped his Book. "Medical to Zone Three," he barked. "Now. That blood is not to be touched without clearance."
Quinn flinched. He hadn't even considered that someone *might* touch it.
Two medics jogged across the dome, kits slung, wearing thin, translucent gloves up to their elbows. They skirted the edge of the crimson puddle carefully, setting scanners on the mat nearby. One aimed a device at Quinn's arms; cold air blew over his skin as the scanner whirred, holographic readouts dancing in the air.
"Surface lacerations absent," the medic murmured, baffled. "But blood volume loss is… What the hell?"
The other medic knelt near the puddle, waving a handheld sensor over it. The device beeped, then let out a shrill, confused tone. The readout flickered between colors.
"Viscosity's off the charts," she muttered. "Coagulation factors… I'm not getting normal readings."
Halvek's gaze stayed fixed on Quinn. "You feel lightheaded?" he demanded.
"No, sir."
"Nausea? Faintness? Vision tunneling?"
Quinn shook his head. If anything, he felt *too* clear. Hyper-aware. The edges of everything around him were etched in razor detail, from the individual scuffs on Halvek's boots to the faint pulse in the sergeant's neck.
"You just expelled an estimated"—the medic glanced at her readout—"twelve to fifteen percent of your blood volume externally, cadet," she said. "You should be unconscious or in shock."
"I feel…" Quinn hesitated, then settled on the safest word. "Fine, ma'am."
Halvek's nostrils flared. "You're *covered* in your own blood and standing over a puddle big enough to drown a rat in," he snapped. "You are not fine."
"…Sir, technically," Milo's voice crackled faintly through someone's open comm channel, "rats are surprisingly buoyant—"
"Oran, shut your mouth," Halvek barked without turning.
The medic cleared her throat. "Sir, this anomaly needs lab analysis. Commander Vale will want—"
"She already knows," Halvek said grimly. "Zone Three: secured. Nobody moves until I say."
Around the dome, the other combat trials had stuttered to a halt. Cadets stared, some craning necks, others whispering behind gloved hands. A few stepped back instinctively, as if the blood on the mat might creep toward them.
Aric Thale hadn't moved.
He stood just beyond the edge of the crimson pool, his boots sprayed with a few spattered drops. None had soaked in. They clung in perfect beads to the composite material, glossy and thick. His eyes were locked on them, some complex mix of revulsion and fascination playing across his features.
When he finally spoke, his voice was lower than usual. Quieter.
"You're not a blank," he said.
Quinn looked at him.
Aric's gaze flicked up, met his. There was anger there, yes—but also something else now. Wariness. A recalculation.
"You're a *monster*," Aric said softly.
The words should have stung. Instead, they slid into place somewhere deep in Quinn, like a key finding the start of a groove.
He didn't answer. He couldn't trust his voice not to tremble.
"Combat Zone Three: suspended," the system announced dutifully. "Result: inconclusive. Manual override enacted."
Halvek turned his head slightly, as if listening to someone in his ear. His jaw worked. Then, abruptly, he straightened.
"Veyra," he said. "You're done here. Medical will escort you to Secondary Lab Two for further analysis. You will obey their instructions without argument."
"Yes, sir," Quinn said.
"And Veyra?"
He looked up.
Halvek's eyes were very cold. "Whatever that stunt was," the sergeant said, voice low enough only Quinn and the medics heard, "you pull it without authorization again, and I won't need Commander Vale to remove you. I'll do it myself."
There was no bluster in the threat. No performative bark. Just flat intent.
Quinn swallowed. "Understood, sir."
The medics hustled him toward the dome's exit, skirting wide of the still-quivering puddle of blood. One of them slapped a sterile wrap around his forearms, not to staunch any visible wound but to keep the remaining blood from smearing onto surfaces.
Behind him, he heard Halvek barking orders—"Containment team to Dome Three. Full hazmat. Get me a bio-sec unit down here, yesterday."
As they reached the doorway, Quinn risked one last glance up at the observation windows.
Vale was gone.
The corridor outside the dome felt cooler, quieter. The sound-dampening panels ate the echoes of boots, turning the world soft around the edges. The medics led Quinn through a warren of hallways he hadn't yet explored, deeper into the academy's core. Signs here bore different markings—biohazard glyphs, restricted access sigils, lab identifiers.
"Hold here," one medic said finally, stopping before a door marked with a stylized double helix and a caution triangle. "Don't touch anything."
Quinn stood, blood-slick under layers of gauze, his burns stinging faintly. His heartbeat had begun to ease, the furious pounding settling into a strong, regular thrum. The hum under his skin had quieted… but not entirely.
It felt like something had stretched for the first time in years, then settled back into a crouch. Awake now. Listening.
His tongue still tasted faintly of iron. His stomach… wasn't exactly hungry. But there was a hollowness there, an awareness of absence, like he'd poured something out and his body wanted it back.
The door panel flashed green. It slid open to reveal a sterile lab—white counters, silver instruments, holo displays humming in standby. The air smelled of antiseptic and recycled air. At the far end, a tall figure in a dark lab coat looked up from a screen.
Commander Vale.
She wasn't in full dress uniform now, just academy black beneath the coat, sleeves rolled to mid-forearm, revealing corded forearms marked with faint, pale scars. Her Ability Book rested open on a stand beside her, its matte black pages veined with subtle silver lines. In this light, it looked less like a book and more like a piece of weaponized architecture.
Her pale eyes flicked to the medics. "Leave us," she said.
"Ma'am, protocol requires—" one began.
Vale didn't raise her voice. "Medical logs will record this as a command-level override. I'll sign the liability personally. Out."
The medics hesitated just long enough to make their reluctance clear, then left, the door whispering shut behind them.
Silence settled in its wake.
Vale regarded Quinn for a long moment. Not speaking. Not moving. Just *looking*.
Under that gaze, the burning in his arms and chest felt suddenly very small.
"Sit," she said finally, gesturing to a stool near the central bench.
He did, the synthetic cushion cold against the back of his legs.
Up close, the smell of antiseptic was sharper. Underneath it, faint but somehow more compelling, was another scent—metallic, distilled. Blood. Not his.
Vale approached, her steps soundless on the lab floor. She stopped within arm's reach, close enough that he could see the fine lines around her eyes, the slightly uneven set of her lower lip where an old cut had healed imperfectly.
"Remove the wraps," she said.
Quinn hesitated. The gauze was already stained a deep, wet red in patches. "Ma'am, it'll get—"
"Messy?" A ghost of something that might have been amusement flickered in her eyes and died. "That's why this is a lab and not your bunk, Cadet. Remove them."
He unwound the gauze. It came away with a faint stickiness, clinging to his skin in reluctant patches. As he peeled it back, more of the dark red sheen beneath was revealed.
Except…
There was less of it now.
Where minutes ago his arms had been coated, now much of the bruised red had faded to rust-colored smears. Some patches of skin were almost clean, save for thin, branching lines tracing along his veins like faint ink.
He stared. "It… I thought there was more."
"There *was* more," Vale said. She picked up a handheld scanner, its surface smooth and black. "Extend your arms."
He did. She passed the scanner slowly over his skin. A gentle vibration hummed through his flesh as the device sampled.
"Blood residue minimal," the scanner's tinny voice reported. "Coagulated content: low. Active hemoglobin presence: trace."
Vale's mouth tightened. "You expended a significant volume in the dome," she said. "Yet your vitals are stable."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Do you feel dizzy?"
"No."
"Short of breath?"
"No."
"Any unusual sensations? Tingling. Buzzing. Heat."
Quinn opened his mouth, then closed it. *If I tell her I felt my blood move,* a queasy thought whispered, *they'll lock you in a tank and cut you open to see how it works.*
But Vale had gone to war with bureaucracy to get him into this academy. She'd written *statistical anomalies have value* on his file. She was not the type to be shocked by weird scan results.
He chose halfway honesty. "My arms feel… heavy," he said. "But in a good way. Stronger. And my leg, where I have an old scar—it… tingled. Before."
"Before the shield manifested," Vale said, not blinking.
He hesitated. "Yes, ma'am."
She set the scanner down. "Cadet Veyra," she said, tone shifting almost imperceptibly—colder now, more clinical. "Do you understand what you did in that dome?"
"I… made some kind of barrier."
"With what?"
"My…" He swallowed. "My blood."
Her pale gaze sharpened. "You are certain of that."
"I watched it. After. It… it fell." His fingers twitched, remembering the strange liquidity, the way it had refused to behave like normal fluid. "It was mine."
"Not necessarily," she said. "Abilities can mimic substances—plasma, liquid constructs, pseudo-organic matrices. Many Affinities produce blood-like manifestations."
She stepped closer still. Quinn resisted the urge to lean away.
"However," she went on softly, "none of those abilities also cause a measurable loss in internal blood volume while leaving the subject's vitals unaffected. And none…" Her gaze flicked to a small monitor on the wall, displaying the residual hazard readings from Dome Three. "None trigger our biohazard alarms at that level."
Quinn's mouth went dry. "Biohazard."
"Your expelled fluid," Vale said evenly, "is not behaving like standard human blood. It resists absorption. It retains structural cohesion beyond expected parameters. It appears to have an… irritant effect on ambient energy fields." She tapped a control. A small holo flared—a close-up replay of one of Aric's residual flames touching the crimson puddle.
The fire *shrunk* on contact.
It didn't sputter out. It recoiled, folded in on itself, then winked away faster than the surrounding heat should have cooled it. The puddle's surface barely rippled.
"Your shield also withstood a higher-than-authorized Scorchburst for nearly twenty seconds," Vale said. "That alone would be noteworthy."
He swallowed hard. "Is that… bad, ma'am?"
Her eyes flicked to his face. For the first time, Quinn saw something in them that wasn't just cool evaluation.
It wasn't warmth.
It was something closer to grim recognition.
"Bad," she repeated, as if tasting the word. "That depends on your perspective, Cadet. The Union has spent two decades trying to solve for front-line casualty rates against aberration-class enemies. The Crimson Front chewed through three entire divisions before we learned how to *hold* against it."
He'd heard of the Crimson Front, like every child growing up under Union propaganda—monsters on the far border, things that made even high-rank Ability users vanish. But the details were always blurred. Classified.
Vale studied him for another long beat. "Tell me," she said. "Have you experienced anything like this before? Any unusual reactions to injury. Fast healing. Unexplained symptoms."
He thought of the maintenance shaft, three years ago. The way the clinic tech had frowned at his chart and muttered, "Huh. Clotting factor's weird." The way he'd healed faster than the projected curve. The way his knee scar had *bled* days ago under a simple pressure scan.
"Just the knee," he said. "It healed fast. The clinic thought it was… a quirk."
"A quirk." Her lip twitched, not quite a smile. "And your parents? Any Ability anomalies logged?"
The room seemed to tilt for a second. "They're dead, ma'am."
"I'm aware," Vale said quietly. "Military contractor accident. That's what your public file says. I've seen the sealed sections." Her gaze didn't soften. If anything, it grew more intent. "Your father, Kael Veyra, held a Class-B research clearance with the Union Biogenics Corps. Your mother, Dr. Nara Quinn-Veyra, was on the same project. Neither held an active Ability Book license. Both died under circumstances that triggered a full internal audit."
"I—I didn't know that," Quinn said. The words stumbled out. His throat felt tight. "I just… I knew they worked in a lab. They never told me what kind."
"Children are seldom briefed on classified programs," Vale said. "Even when they *are* the program."
The world dropped out from under him for a heartbeat.
"I don't understand," he whispered.
"I don't expect you to," she said, not unkindly. "Not yet."
She turned away, fingers dancing across a holo console. Lines of data spooled up—charts, gene markers, security tags marked CRIMSON-LEVEL CLEARANCE ONLY.
Quinn caught a name before she folded the display down.
*CRIMSON CODEX—ITERATION LOG 4*
"Crimson," he repeated, before he could stop himself. The word felt… familiar. It sat on his tongue like a forgotten flavor. "What is—"
"That's enough," Vale cut in, and now her tone *was* sharp. "You are not cleared for that information, Cadet."
He shut his mouth with an audible click.
She regarded him for a moment longer, then exhaled slowly. When she spoke again, her voice had shifted back toward that hard, commanding register that rang across parade grounds.
"Your display in the dome will be officially recorded as an unanticipated manifestation event," she said. "Until further notice, your status remains *provisional*. You will report to me directly after physical combat drills on alternate days for controlled testing."
"Yes, ma'am."
"As of this moment, you are under standing order *not* to attempt to consciously replicate that… shield without supervision." Her eyes bored into his. "If your blood manifests again spontaneously in a way that could harm a fellow cadet or staff member, you are to disengage, withdraw, and report immediately. Do you understand me, Cadet Veyra?"
The memory of the shield slamming into existence—of the satisfaction that had hummed in his bones—whispered in his muscles. Some small, hungry part of him *wanted* to call it again. To feel that surge. To test its limits.
He forced his voice steady. "Yes, Commander. I understand."
"Good." There was no satisfaction in the word. Only necessity. "For now, you will tell anyone who asks that an unknown defensive reflex triggered under extreme stress. Nothing more. You will *not* speculate. You will not demonstrate. You will *not* let them treat you like a sideshow."
He thought of Aric calling him a monster. Of the way the other cadets had looked at the blood on the floor. Like it might grow teeth.
"What if they already do?" he asked, before he could catch the words.
Vale's expression didn't change. "Then you will remember that you are a cadet of Aureon Military Academy," she said. "You will follow protocol, respect the chain of command, and train harder than any of them. And if anyone attempts to injure you to see what happens…" A cold glint entered her eyes. "You will *survive* long enough to report their names to me personally. I will handle the rest."
A weird, reflexive half-laugh escaped him. "Yes, ma'am."
She paused. For the first time, something approaching softness—no, not softness, but… recognition—touched her gaze.
"You're not the only one here who's been called a monster, Cadet Veyra," she said quietly. "Aureon exists to turn monsters into weapons the Union can point at something worse. The question you need to answer is whether you will let that happen *to* you… or take control of it yourself."
Quinn swallowed hard. "I don't know how."
"Then that," she said crisply, "is what we'll find out."
She tapped a console. A side door slid open, revealing a smaller room beyond—medical scanners, a reclined chair, restraint straps neatly coiled.
"Test cycle one," Vale said. "Cardio-vascular stress loading. Controlled micro-lacerations. We will measure your recovery curves and the thresholds at which your… manifestation reoccurs." Her eyes flicked to his arms. "You should be capable of withstanding this level without permanent damage."
The restraint chair felt suddenly very close.
"Ma'am," Quinn said, voice a little tight, "will this… hurt?"
"Yes," Vale said simply. "But you've already proven you can endure pain, Cadet. What you have not proven is that you can *control* what's waking up in you."
He looked at his hands.
The faint branching lines along his veins were dimmer now, fading. But if he looked very closely, he could see a subtle, pulsing darkness there, like something moving slow and patient beneath the skin.
Monsters.
Mockingbirds.
The academy mimicked war here, with domes and holograms and calibration speeches. They all rehearsed—officers, cadets, Books—echoing scripts written by battles fought far away. But the thing inside him didn't feel like a script. It felt older. More personal.
"Get in the chair, Cadet Veyra," Commander Vale said. "Let's see what *your* pages look like when they're written in blood instead of ink."
His legs carried him forward before his mind had finished deciding. He sat, the chair's surface cool. The restraints lay slack at his sides, not yet engaged, their presence a silent promise.
As the scanners hummed to life and the first prickling sensation crawled along his skin, Quinn closed his eyes.
In the dark behind his lids, where the hum of the machines blended with the steadier thrum of his heartbeat, something else stirred. A whisper, not in words, but in a rush of remembered heat and the thick, wet sound of his own shield collapsing.
Not a Book.
Not a sigil.
Just blood.
And for the first time in his life, Quinn Kael Veyra understood—viscerally, terrifyingly—that being a "blank" might have been the least dangerous thing about him.